RAKBANK joins Arab Monetary Fund’s payment platform Buna

By Leandra Monteiro

RAKBANK announced that it has joined the Arab Monetary Fund’s (AMF) Buna payment platform. In line with the Bank’s digital transformation strategy, this partnership aims to provide customers with an enhanced payment service platform for sending and receiving cross-border, multicurrency payments safely and securely.

Buna enables commercial banks, central banks, and other financial institutions, in the Arab region and beyond to send and receive payments in Arab currencies as well as key international currencies. It offers real-time services through a centralized, risk-controlled, and secure platform.

As RAKBANK is a participating Bank in Buna Payments platform, it will now have access to Real time Gross Settlement (RTGS) for foreign remittances offering an efficient, accessible, and risk-controlled payments process to its customers. The main objective is to harness the capabilities of the Buna payment platform to better serve its customers. This partnership will further strengthen the country’s regional cross-border payments sector and provide a seamless payment infrastructure.

Raheel Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer of RAKBANK, said, “Joining the Buna payments platform is a pivotal step in RAKBANK’s plan to support regional cross border trade. It is important for us to explore strategic initiatives that enhance the region’s payments infrastructure. As a customer-focused bank in the UAE, we understand the importance of convenience and speed when it comes to payments. This announcement is in line with our commitment to investing in smarter banking solutions and increasingly using technology to make our range of services more accessible to additional customers, wherever they are. We would like to thank Buna for their exceptional cooperation which has made this process easy and swift.”

Commenting on this, Mehdi Manaa, Chief Executive Officer of Buna, said, ‘’We are pleased to welcome RAKBANK as participant in Buna. With the onboarding of RAKBANK, we look forward to unlocking the opportunities in enhancing cross border payments in multiple Arab and international currencies in compliance with global standards and international best practices. This is a major step to realize our vision to empower economies and strengthen integration within the Arab world. At this occasion, I would also like to thank the Central Bank of UAE for its continuous support to Buna.”

This move comes as the first of many initiatives by the Bank, aimed at enhancing their international payments capabilities. Buna has rapidly grown its network to include over 84 participant banks.